The Valentines' Day Getaway
by Irish Thorn
Summary: It's Valentines' Day weekend and Hermione seems to have forgotten the date. Can Draco jog her memory?


_A/N: This is my entry for the Twin Exchange's February Challenge. On the 20th a poll will open up on their forum to vote for my story. Please, pop over and vote. Thank-you._

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Hermione Granger was working away in her office that Friday, blissfully unaware of what was going on outside of her door. She had a dissertation on Werewolves to turn in by the end of the day, and her boss hated tardiness; well, it actually wasn't due until the following Monday, but there was no way that she was going to be working on it this weekend when she could be relaxing instead. She was so caught up in what she was doing that she didn't hear her door open and was startled when her fiancé put his hand on her shoulder. Her war reflexes had never gone away and before she knew what she was doing, she had her wand pointed up under his throat. She dropped her wand when she realized her mistake, immediately apologetic.

"I'm so sorry, Draco! I keep telling you not to sneak up on me like that!" She was giving him a quick once-over, making sure she hadn't done any damage before leaning in and hugging him.

"I hardly snuck up on you, Hermione. I knocked three times and said your name twice before I touched you." Draco Malfoy was shaking his head in amusement as he held the young woman against his body. She leaned back enough to look up and him and purse her lips, with a chuckle he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, not pushing further than the light peck.

"What brings you to my neck of the woods, Draco?" Hermione was settling back into her chair, indicating that he should take a seat across from her. He chose instead to sit on the corner of her desk facing her, a twinkle in his gray eyes.

"I want to take you away for the weekend, Granger." He pulled at the cuff of the suit that she just noticed he was wearing; the man really could fill out a suit. She was so distracted by the man sitting there, his long, lean legs within easy reaching distance, the smell of his expensive cologne mixed with the intoxicating scent of just him was causing her senses to reel. _Wait, what had he said?_

"I can't go away this weekend, Draco. I'm a shoe in for the promotion that they're announcing next week and I don't want to hurt my chances of getting it by being unavailable if something comes up." She noted the look of dejection that passed over his features before he gave her one of his signature smirks.

"Granger, what could possibly happen that they 'might need you'? You work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, I doubt they'll even notice you're gone." Draco looked put-out when she started shaking her head at him again.

"I'm sorry, love. Not this weekend." Hermione was genuinely remorseful, she loved going away with her wonderful fiance; he always took her somewhere new and lovely in its own way. She didn't want to tell him no, she just didn't want to give Anders a chance to swoop in and take her promotion away from her. She busied herself with some papers on her desk, trying to hide her own growing disappointment.

"Well, I'm not taking no for an answer. You're off in four hours, be ready." With that Draco left her office. She sat there fuming for some time. _How dare he?! How can he just—how can—why does he—. Arse hole._

Hermione spent the rest of her day being distracted by all kinds of things from a Leprechaun uprising in Dublin, to a small skirmish between Centaur packs in Wales. Each time someone called her away from her desk to help out, she had to leave her dissertation behind unfinished. She was growing impatient with the day as a whole; she just wanted to get her paper done so that she could worry about her promotion in peace this weekend.

The quick trip to Ireland was just so she could bring a copy of the bylaws for Leprechaun-Wizard relations to her boss; the uprising was over something that had been settled between the two groups of magical beings more than three centuries ago. It was an issue that was going to be revisited if she got the position that she was counting on.

The trip to Wales took a little longer as the Centaurs recognized that she was an advocate for Magical Creature relations and everyone started talking at her at once. She had to speak up and respectfully had each group's leader explain the situation. It was, apparently, a misunderstanding in which it was unknown whom had rights to the hunting grounds of the forest; she just directed them all back to their known lands and promised to be by with a team of people the following week to assess tribal lands. She wasn't stupid, she knew that they probably went right back to trying to kill each other after she left, but at least they pretended to give a crap about what she said.

Before she knew it, it was five o'clock and time for her to pack up and leave; but she couldn't make herself get up from the desk. She still had to read through the dissertation and make sure it was perfect before putting it on her boss's desk. She took the time to look through it, knowing that her boss would still be in his office after the long day he had. She was finally content with everything she'd written by about six-fifteen. _Draco's going to kill me!_

She knocked on her boss's door and waited for him to holler out that she could enter. She dropped the paper on his desk with a self-satisfied smirk, noting the faint look of surprise on his face when she did so.

"Well, Miss Granger, I can't say that I'm all that surprised that you managed to get the assignment done so quickly. I'm sure you and your Mr. Malfoy have plans for the weekend, so I won't keep you. Good night, Miss Granger." Mr. Harper waved her out, not allowing her a word in edgewise. She mumbled a quick farewell, not entirely sure if he heard her, and walked back down the hall to her own office.

Quickly gathering up her jacket and her briefcase, she began making her way out to the floo fires set in the atrium. It didn't take her long to notice how deserted everything was at that time of night on a Friday. There was minimal lighting in the great room, meaning that the day security guards had left and the night guards were doing their rounds. She swiftly walked to the grate at the far end of the room, noticing that it was the only one still lit. Her footsteps echoed off the walls, causing her to take note of the fact that she was alone. She walked a little quicker.

A loud crash stopped her in her steps, drawing her attention to the direction that she just came from. She debated whether or not to go back and see if someone needed help before deciding that she'd seen too many horror movies and continuing on toward the grate. It was just as she was stepping into the grate that she was violently ripped backwards against someone's chest. She let out a squeak, tried to take in a breath to alert someone to what was happening, and felt a hand clamp down on her mouth. She tried desperately to throw her briefcase to the floor, wanting to cause some commotion to bring someone to her aid, but she couldn't get away from the solid presence. She tried to elbow the perpetrator in the gut, tried desperately to get them to let her go; other than a grunt, there was nothing to show for her efforts. However, judging by the grunt, her assailant was definitely a male.

She fought with all her might, clawing at the arms that gripped her, trying to get to her wand. She realized all at once that she was starting to see black spots dance across her vision; in her attempt to break away from the villain, she'd used up any extra oxygen that she'd had and was slowly losing her grip on reality. She couldn't hold on much longer, and started concentrating on getting the hand away from her mouth so that she could breathe. She bit down on the fleshy part of the man's hand, tasting the metallic blood that flooded her mouth. Now she really couldn't breathe, and she was suffocating in some unknown man's blood. _Great thinking, Hermione, that's one of those brilliant ideas that everyone knows you for._ Then everything went black.

Hermione woke up with a splitting headache and a body that was on fire from the fight. Without moving and giving away the fact that she was awake, she tried to assess everything that she knew. She knew that she'd never made it home after work and that Draco would probably be looking for her. She knew that the person who'd accosted her was definitely male. She knew that she'd wounded him, taking a good sized portion of his flesh out with her teeth. She knew that she was on something soft, a bed or pile of blankets. She knew that the sun was shining, at least a bit, it was subtle light so was either sun rise or sunset. She knew that her nice safe bed was— _moving!_ Her eyes flew open to see where she was. Her mind immediately went to the last romance novel that she'd read in which a young woman was kidnapped and kept in the bowels of a ship until she'd made it to America where she was rescued.

Well, she wasn't in a boat, that much could be said. She grasped at the edge of the basket she was in, pulling herself up to look thousands of feet down at the ground. She screamed a bit, gripping the edge for dear life, _she hated heights!_ She was just wondering how on earth she was going to get down when she heard a familiar chuckle behind her. Her head snapped around so fast she was pretty sure she heard it crack; there was Draco standing there, casually leaning against the other side of the balloon basket. _What was going on?!_

"Explain." Was all she managed to get out, not bothering to loosen her grip on the basket; she knew if she did that she would ring Draco's neck.

"You didn't want to come away with me, so I had you kidnapped." He was smirking; _how dare he smirk like that?! What was he thinking?! She was going to have to kill him, his mum would understand._

"You had me WHAT?!" She couldn't keep the rising panic out of her voice, she anger, hurt, and betrayal currently taking a backseat.

"Well, what else was I supposed to do? You said you didn't want to come." _Could the man really be that clueless?! She thought that she'd had better judgement when she'd said yes to his proposal, but now she wishes that she would have pushed him off the bridge they'd been on instead._

"Why was your next logical step for me saying no to a vacation to kidnap me? I told you why I couldn't go! Now Anders might get the promotion over me! I worked so hard for this, Draco! How could you?" The last was said as a whisper. She couldn't believe the predicament that she found herself in. Maybe it was all a dream and she would wake up soon in bed perfectly fine. She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths, imagining that her feet were on solid ground.

"Well, love, it's a pretty important weekend and I wasn't sure if you just forgot or you didn't care." Draco's words caused Hermione to stop and think about the date. When she'd gone to work it was Friday, February twelfth— _shit!_ Her eyes were as large as saucers when she realized what was so important about the date. Her and Draco had their first date five years ago on St Valentine's Day. She couldn't believe that she'd forgotten! She felt lower than low; what kind of fiancé was she?!

"I'm so sorry, Draco." _Oh, how the tables have turned._ Now she was the one apologizing. She hoped he wasn't too upset with her. He held his arms open for her, willing her to trust him enough to let go of the basket; she did. She wrapped her arms around him, praying that the hot air balloon that they were in would land quickly. He must have read her mind because they quickly began their descent.

"Look, love. Over there is Notre Dame, you always said you wanted to go to France with me. When we land, maybe we can go for a walk?" It was phrased as a question, but she knew that she needed to say yes. She nodded her head, just waiting until she could be on her own two feet; _she hated heights!_

It seemed to take forever to land, but it was probably only about fifteen minutes or so. It was really a beautiful landscape, lit by what she'd originally recognized as sunset. When they hit the ground, she wasted no time in clambering out of the basket, landing in a heap on the ground with a grunt. She took a deep breath, basking in the feel of the ground beneath her. Now that she wasn't scared witless, she felt her headache come back. Remembering the events of— _was it earlier that night? Or the night before?_ — she started trying to get a good look at Draco's hand; she knew she'd bitten pretty hard.

"Um… Draco?" She pushed herself up into a sitting position as he stepped elegantly out of the basket— _how did he do that?_ He gave a non-committal hum of acknowledgement. "How's your hand?" Draco looked confused for a minute before the metaphorical lightbulb turned on behind his eyes.

"Oh, about that… I actually sent Goyal to kidnap you. He's the most brutish person I know and I know you could have gotten away from pretty much anyone else…" He trailed off because Hermione started laughing; a hysterical, scary laugh that immediately set him on his guard. "Are you okay?" He wasn't sure what else to say, Hermione had never been like this before. She stopped laughing and glared at him.

"No, I'm not okay, Draco. You had me kidnapped!" Draco had the good grace to wince at the accusation, but apparently not the common sense to not start nodding.

"Maybe we should go on that walk now." He was helping her to her feet, hoping that the angry little witch would get over her ire quickly, he was just doing this to spend time with her on their five year anniversary.

"Draco! What do you have to say for yourself?!" Hermione had been calm, but now she was getting angry again. _How dare he?! Just because he has all the money in the world at his disposal doesn't mean that he can just do whatever he wants! Kidnapping is illegal!_

"I'm sorry?"

"Why is that a question?! Of course you're sorry! You can't not be sorry!" She was fuming now. "I just can't believe this! I never would have believed this of you! On what planet would—"

"Hey, love?" He had to interrupt her before she really got going in her tirade.

"WHAT?!" She glared at him in earnest.

"Happy Valentines' Day." He kissed her cheek and then walked off, leaving her standing next to a hot air balloon in the middle of France, sputtering in anger.

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 _A/N: Even if you guys choose not to vote, please review and let me know what you think._


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